Patricia Clark

 

 O Lucky Day by Patricia Clark makes a reader feel luckier in every possible way. The potent pacing of these poems, their gracious attention to sound and flow, and deeply grounded considerations—woods, birds, plants, beloved people—improve the spirit right away. Life feels richer, more available somehow—nearer and dearer in a traumatic time of too many conflicts. We need this wisdom, cheer, and truthful gaze.

 

—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Grace Notes: Poems about Families

 

In the poems of Patricia Clark's fine new book, O Lucky Day, the title's enthusiasm is tempered by the knowledge of losses and inflected with subtle surprises of survival. There's a buoyant yet quiet sense of wonder rippling through these poems, "relishing the juice" of living, even as the speaker prepares for what comes next: "how I train myself // to disappear, into . . . / the viburnum just about to flower." Praise for a long marriage, the loss of friends and beloveds, the selfawareness of both vitality and mortality—these comprise the clarifying paradox of O Lucky Day. Particularly moving are elegies for her father and for her mentor, Stanley Plumly, but all along it's the natural world that provides Clark with her richest variety of beauty, fragility, and obstinate song.

 

—David Baker, author of Whale Fall and Swift: New & Selected Poems

 

From the first poem "Oxygen" and throughout the book, these contemplative poems will breathe new life into your soul. Patricia Clark's poems are rich with metaphors and filled with fresh ways of looking at the everyday. Her poem "What My Father Wished For" shares an honest and moving expression of the meaning of life near the end. The father states, "I've had everything in this life I could have wanted." Beautiful! I highly recommend this new collection by one of Michigan's finest and best known poets.

 

—M.L. Liebler, author of Underneath My American Face: Five Decades of Selected Poetry

 

***If you order O Lucky Day and wish you could have a signed copy, email Patricia at patriciapoet@gmail.com and she will mail you a signed bookplate to place in your book. It's a great substitute! No extra charge!

 

See the link above to order O Lucky Day from Madville Publishing.

 

If you do not order directly from Madville Publishing, I highly recommend calling/finding your local bookseller and ordering the book directly from them. In Grand Rapids, MI I recommend Books & Mortar, 966 Cherry St. SE, telephone (616) 214-8233. On the internet, consider Thriftbooks.com and/or Bookshop.org.

 

 

 Patricia Clark is the author of six volumes of poetry, including Self-Portrait with a Million Dollars, The Canopy and, before that, Sunday Rising. She has also published three chapbooks: Deadlifts (New Michigan Press), Wreath for the Red Admiral and Given the Trees. Her work has been featured on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and has appeared in The Atlantic, Gettysburg Review, Poetry, Slate, and Stand. She was a scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and has completed residencies at The MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Tyrone Guthrie Center (in County Monaghan (Ireland), and the Ragdale Colony. Awards for her work include a Creative Artist Grant in Michigan, the Mississippi Review Prize, the Gwendolyn Brooks Prize, and co-winner of the Lucille Medwick Prize from the Poetry Society of America. From 2005-2007 she was honored to serve as the poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was Poet-in-Residence and Professor in the Department of Writing at Grand Valley State University in Michigan where she worked for thirty years.

Patricia's book The Canopy received the Poetry Society of Virginia's book award for 2018 and she gave a reading at their poetry festival on May 5, 2018 in Williamsburg, VA.